I ask myself, and others around me, whether I know them or not, this question quite frequently. Recently, I've been playing with writing a book with that as the title, focusing on technology that people expected to be common by now, whether in science fiction or in attempted prophecy. Specifically things we could have, but don't for silly reasons.

What's your favorite technology that isn't, but could be? If I ever actually write the thing, I'll be sure to include your suggestions and give credit.

I read most of it whilst waiting for my futurephone (N95 8Gb) to get fixed.. experiencing the worst approximation of customer-service I've seen yet(as Cory says: technology giveth and technology taketh away)

this is also Warren's thesis in Doktor Sleepless, yeah?!

none of this means i don't have any of that "generous anger" re: the future we were promised, but has still failed to arrive

man.. i grew up late 80s / early 90s clipping bits from the newspaper promising us a functional International Space Station by 1995.i thought for sure i'd be an astronaut by now.wtf happened to that?!

we have all these cool toys to play withbut we've gone backwards in so many other regards (ie customer-service)most companies seem to worry only what their shareholders think - and could not care less about the ppl who buy their products

After reading what others have said, what happened to my living longer. I think somewhere when I was growing up someone was talking about the future being a place without disease and stuff. People would live forever. Where and what the hell happened to it?

@m1k3y Yes we all should be astronaunts now. I do remember when the Internation Space Station was supposed to be all done and such. With that we should be on the moon. Damn it. What the hell happened to the future that we were promised.

Been thinking at length on the subject because of Doktor Sleepless. There was a point when the future that we were promised stopped being talked about? It was just understood that a certain future was going to happen and then it stopped being talked about at a certain point? DAMN IT!!

Being the cynic that I am, I see the introduction of mass-produced jetpacks and flying cars as the start of a new wave of Cruel and Unusual population control. Seriously, I've nearly been run over two times in as many weeks by idiots who can barely get their heads around driving on a two-dimensional plane. Add "Up and Down" to the equation, thing are going to get pretty messy. (plus, I work in one of the only tall office buildings for miles around and I could do without living in fear of some drunk driver ploughing their jet-assisted Vauxhall hatchback into my fifth-floor window)

But if I was to put my naive optimist hat on, what I really miss is the Gerry/Sylvia Anderson vision of the future: some millionaire on an island sending his kids off in international rescue missions in rockets, a high-tech international peace-force where officers are referred to by a rank and a colour of the rainbow, people living on a space station on the moon while it hurtles through space. Freaking Stingray. That sort of thing.

Anderson even named one of his series Space 1999. Then again, Orwell wrote about life in 1984 and he was only out by about 20 years, so maybe we just need to wait a little longer for that space station on the moon.

The technology is here, but it's the implementation that won't ever come to pass. I used to be a Boy Scout (Holla!) and remember getting a "Science Special" edition of Boy's Life magazine. It had cars driving themselves. Sure, they looked like your standard absurd bubble-domed future buggy, but they were DRIVING THEMSELVES!! Sensing the other cars around them, knowing which lane they're in, which gas station to go to, how their wear & tear effects their trajectory and adjusting, figure out where the quickest detours are in the case of an accident. Your cat wants to eat a cheeseburger? Grunt into the computer microphone and the car will take you to the nearest McDonalds.

As an Orange County, CA resident, this would be awesome, as we have many shitty drivers. GPS systems that talk to you aren't enough for the drunk or, even worse, the elderly. Some people just suck at driving young and sober. There's plenty of room for manual over ride for the genuine car lovers. They tend to be the best drivers anyhow.

And I guess since we're on the subject of traffic, I can't go down either the 5 or the 405 without envisioning 2 giant magnet powered monorails, both soaring between the North and Southbound lanes. With 10 mile gaps between stops, it'd be golden! GOLDEN!!

So those helicopter backpacks the Smithsonian has on display? My dad testflew them, and in his words "they were fun, but, well, tough to land." (In his day, he was a helluva rotor-pilot, and if he had trouble landing them?) Inexperto's right, that sort of thing's right up there w/assisting Survival of the Fittest.

I'm up for the monorails. As says OctEgon, let's think future in terms of public, not more private, transit, eh?